


Defenseless beneath this shield

by stateofintegrity



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 04:48:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13780035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: Still freshly stunned by the truth of his heritage, Loki is unprepared for further revelations from Thor.





	Defenseless beneath this shield

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first ever Thor fic and everything is probably incorrect... I was inspired by the script found here: http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Thor.html and an image someone made of Loki covered in rose petals! Apologies for any errors.

Icy fragments of rainbow splintered around them. As it paled, the dissolving light beat like pale wings and the two warriors felt a world come into focus around them. Smaragd eyes – burning like emeralds washed in acid – grew dark with anger at the sight of a familiar field: their old sparring grounds. Loki spun on his heels.

“The first time we’ve spent together in days, brother, and you would arm me?” A dagger came into his hand with such speed that Thor never saw it drawn. Loki’s powers kindled and a line of flame danced down the black metal. “Or perhaps you bring me here to mock my ‘tricks,’ my ‘perfidious’ fighting style – to remind me I am no aesir.”

Thor’s mouth moved, opening once – and then again. “Loki… brother…” His throat was tight, muscles corded as if Jörmungandr had wound himself about his vocal cords, coils pulsing, mirrored scales showing his own desperate, darkening eyes. When his words finally came, they were uttered in a stranger’s voice. “I admire your deadly dancer’s grace,” he croaked, knowing that Loki heard only mockery. “Your cunning.”

“An enemy’s cunning,” Loki reminded him. “A monster’s grace.”

Thor did not seem to hear. “Brother, your spells are powerful. Strong enough to shield you from Heimdall and the Allfather alike. Have you strength enough to enclose both of us in your shield, here?”

The trickster’s very ears seemed to prick under the long flow of his dark hair; to touch Loki’s curiosity was to touch very near his heart. He was so startled by Thor’s unusual query that he neglected to chide his brother for failing to know the range of his powers. The shield sang into being; a great eye seemed to close over them, locking them away. Loki searched Thor’s face for a sign that he had recognized the change, but Asgard’s mightiest warrior spoke neither praise of his spell nor disapproval at what he had always called “tricks.”

“We are hidden, brother-mine,” Loki said at last, losing patience. “Unseen by any in the nine realms. What words of yours require such dark designs?” He reached forward to grasp a length of golden hair and twirl it around his finger. _You have ever been a creature of light – open, glowing, golden, a beacon that others crowd to, leaving me the shadow stitched to your boot soles, dragged along as you dragged me to Jotunheim where all shadows deserted me and left me burning in the light of the truth…_

Thor’s very skin seemed as brittle as glass; his eyes fixed on those long, sorcerous fingers and an old aching awakened beneath his armor. The cage of his bones rattled, wracked with tremors. Loki saw – and wondered. “You are right, brother, to note that we have been long days apart,” he began at last, comforted that his words were given over in secret, that his failure, if failure were all he were to know, would be witnessed by no one else.

“Since Jotunheim.” Loki’s hand was withdrawn and his voice struck like a snake, the pain trivial next to the venom.

The word came out in a shudder of breath: “Yes.”

Loki turned away into a sudden-born wind that belonged not to the world they stood on but to his own soul. It caught his cloak and drew the fern-dark fabric out to lash like the tail of an angry cat. “No doubt you had need of time to process, to adjust yourself and your memories to the knowledge of what I had become.” He did not say, “I had need of you, brother. I needed to know that no taint of fear had come to dwell in your eyes when you looked upon me, no disgust, no rejoicing in the fact that you alone could declared heir, because I could only ever be a nightmare to the people of Asgard.” The wind reared and trumpeted around them.

Thor sought after his voice, but the mighty strength he had always used to reach for Mjolnir had fled his body like a ghost from a battlefield. Eventually, desperate in the face of all that Loki was misreading, he called up the scattering of syllables that would force his brother to turn. “I was afraid.”

Green and purple flame danced in the trickster’s eyes; others had cowered or fled at their appearance in the past but Thor knew that they were a sign of fear. “Afraid of the fiend you once called brother?”

It was clear to Loki’s burning eyes that Thor struggled. He imagined that his fight was with his revulsion. He might have celebrated – getting Thor to admit fear was no light feat – but he had never wished to be the wellspring of his brother’s terrors and could not rejoice in his newfound power.

“No. No, Loki. I was afraid of what I would _do_.”

A dark brow arched – cold and sharp as a crow’s wings against a winter sky. “You were afraid of how you would respond to me, knowing what I was and all that we had shared? Afraid to vomit on my fine boots, perhaps? Afraid you would pummel my bones to pale dust in your great anger? Afraid you would wrap your strong hands around my slender throat?”

Horror waved white banners in his cheeks. “No!”

Exhausted with the riddle and with the new burden of self-knowledge, Loki looked down and played with a pattern in his gloves. “You’re making no sense.”

The aesir clenched his fists. Words were the gift of the silver-tongued creature before him. He was grappling in the dark, fumbling after syllables that crumbled at a touch. “Brother, there is a casket of jewels at the foot of my bed.”

Frigga’s gift to her eldest son – her _only_ son, Loki realized – the jewels were meant for his future bride. “I know it.” Thinking of the casket, realization blossomed in him like a bouquet of hemlock, wolf’s bane, and snakeroot. His veins were swamped with poisons. “You will place those rare gems into my hands if I will leave Asgard? You will buy my exile?”

“I would drop that casket from the rainbow bridge in return for a single jewel – The Jewel of Jotunheim.”

The wind died around them. As it fell, it blew out the fire raging in Loki’s eyes.

Thor was smiling gently, his eyes urging the man before him. “Do you understand now, brother?”

Loki’s mouth hung open a little; his silver tongue was leaden in his mouth.

Thor reached for him as if to grasp him by the shoulders, but his arms fell before he chanced a touch. Loki noticed the vambraces that covered his arms; they were new and decorated with a _very familiar_ pattern. “Thor! How long have you worn these? How has no one seen?”

If anyone had noticed what amounted to an Asgardian declaration of attachment, Loki was certain he would have heard. Thor was the most eligible figure of the court; such an avowal would ruffle a great many royal feathers.

Thor’s grin took years from his face. “You have ever had the keenest eyes in the court. And the most beautiful. But, in truth, though I have long owned them, I have dared to show them only to you – here.”

There was no mistaking the meaning of that design, but, “You are ensorcelled! Enspelled!” Loki’s hands glowed as he called up his powers. Curious flecks of light speckled Thor’s form, searching for the root of his madness.

Thor’s laughter was as golden as the heart of a dandelion. “Only by your beauty.”

Loki spluttered, fighting to form words and failing in a dramatic fashion.

“I would brag that I conquered that silver tongue you are so famous for, but I would not embarrass you by speaking to others of feelings you do not return.”

“I… I did not say that I felt no desire for you.” The path before him was new and untested; this was the most Loki would dare before he felt for trapdoors and stumbling blocks.

 _This time_ Thor did grab him, shaking him so that his teeth clacked together. “Brother, speak! You do find me beautiful?”

Loki snorted a laugh. “Everyone knows you are beautiful, Odinson.” _Such a name never belonged to me. I am Laufeyson, now._ He kept walking into the knowledge of who he was; its sharp edges drew blood every time he was careless enough to forget his new identity.

“I care not for their praise.” His eyes were beseeching. “Loki…”

The spellcaster was beginning to regain himself. He had ever been the shadow prince. He had just learned that he had begun life as a bastard, cast off to freeze or starve. He now knew he was a trinket stolen to be bartered back for peace, a conduit for the Allfather’s power and ambition. _Am I now to be **this**? Beloved of the lord of lightning? _ “How long have cared for _my_ praise?”

“How long have I desired you?” Thor closed his eyes as if against too strong a light. “I know not when it began. I have denied it. Hidden it. Fought against it harder than I fought against Asgard’s foes. I knew you might be disgusted by this mad hunger you create in me… but when I learned the truth of your heritage, learned that you might rule beside me, I had to speak.”

 _Rule. You would offer me **rule**? And all for something as paltry as love? Brother, you are a fool._ The voice in his head spoke with a forked tongue, seeking to guard him from emotions that threatened to drag him under like riptides. Following his return from Jotunheim, he had thought to never belong anywhere again. And here was Thor, holding out his hand, offering a haven.

Loki sought shelter in his old ways, surveying the surrounding plains with a sniff. “You say you’ve dwelled long with these feelings, but you bring me _here_ for your confession? Is your desire so great that you would have me in mud?”

Thor smiled a welcome at a version of Loki he recognized (and at the possibility that Loki would allow himself to be “had.”) “I thought you might react more violently than you have.”

As soon as he had his footing, Thor kept depriving him of it. “You wanted to give me a chance to _fight you_?”

“It would have been your right. I thought you might want to stick a dagger in my ribs at the least. I told you I admire your skill with a blade, did I not? I would have come to you after Jotunheim and praised you but I had heard Father’s news by then and you would have seen my desire.” _I did not want to alarm you, dear one._

Loki’s eyes were unnaturally wide and dark. For all that they had been discussing desire, it had not occurred to him that he could have such power. _I can do that to **him**? Make him hard?_

“Tell me what is to become of us, Loki.”

“My name in your mouth… has it always sounded thus?”

“Of course not.” He reached over to cup his chin, to let loving fingers trace the line of jaw and cheek. “You would have heard. But now the truth has been spoken between us. No longer will I dim the brightness of my eyes on seeing you, or hide from you the pleasure I have in watching you move. Now say if you will come into my arms.”

Loki backed away, almost stumbling out of his touch. “I have left such sadness behind me, brother. Done such wrong. Even allied to your golden goodness, I will do it again. I will use you, try to rule through you.”

“You can try. You will be my favorite risk.”

Loki knew that Thor spoke the truth. Loki wanted to curse him, to tell him he was wrong, to persuade him to direct his desire toward a safer alternative. Instead, he began removing Thor’s armor piece by piece and dropping it into the dirt.

When his naked ribs were revealed, Thor pointed to the white lines upon them. “These are your scars. So long I have dreamed of feeling your mouth upon them.”

Curiosity lit his mind. What would Thor do under his lips? Moan – it turned out, like a mighty oak tortured by high winds, heaving, splintering.

 _Fast, then,_ thought the magic-user, dropping to his knees. His comment about mud was forgotten as the walls of the shield began to shudder as if surrounded by a storm. _The storm is **him**_ **,** Loki thought, fingers splayed on Thor’s thighs. The golden hairs glinted around his heavy sex as he drew him into his mouth. Mouth full, he spoke the words into Thor’s mind: _You taste of summer rain_.

When the peak was reached – far too quickly for the aesir – they were both outlined in lightning; Loki’s lips felt pleasantly scorched. While Thor sank down, recovering as much from his confession as from the brief, bright act, Loki’s magic seized them and swept them away.

 

 

****

 

 

“We are in your chambers,” Thor said, looking around, unabashed at his state of undress. “But not?”

“Your fantasy,” Loki explained. “I took it from your mind while you were… occupied.” The coverlets on the bed were the mingled shades of berry wine and crushed current and seemed to be made of rose petals sewn together with golden thread. Loki lifted an eyebrow at his brother as he stroked the satiny petals.

“I thought the color would look nice against your skin,” Thor explained.

Candles gave the close space most of its light, but a high window also allowed in moonlight so pure that it could only exist in the mind; it gave a blue-black shine to Loki’s hair. The second-born lay back against the bed, luxuriating in comfort conjured from his brother’s imagination. “I would have guessed your mind was occupied with battles and weapons – not such softness as this.”

“The credit is owed to you.” _You conjure madness in me – but beauty, too._ “Why did you agree to please me?”

“Curiosity.”

His mouth did not move but a he seemed to be smiling behind his face, eyes gleaming as moonlight and candlelight alike painted his unadorned flesh. “Not desire?”

“No.”

“Liar.” Thor came to stand at the edge of the bed, his entire body an invitation. “Come, Loki, you are as hard as uru. Will you have no pleasure of me?”

_It is not just pleasure you offer me, brother, but vulnerability._

Thor saw something in his eyes – or guessed something from the years they had fought side by side, the nights they had lain shoulder to shoulder sharing secrets and weaving tales of the glory they would bring to Asgard. “It is your turn to be afraid, high-heart. You are afraid to be laid bare before me.”

Thor stepped closer still, warm and shining – a walking promise. “I would think that it would be a rare treat for you with all of your powers, something you might relish.” He remembered sparring sessions , remembered feeling Loki rage against his strength and then go deceptively slack, defeated, only to coil like a snake (sometimes _as_ a snake) and strike again – harder, faster, drawing blood. There was a key to his brother’s – his would-be lover’s – character here. He needed only to turn it.

In a single fluid moment he grabbed Loki’s fine, thin wrists in one hand. Loki strained, veins and vessels corded under his grip, but pinned he remained as Thor began to settle over him, gifting him everything.

“You’re trembling,” he told the slighter man.

“Shivering,” Loki corrected, clinging to shreds of dignity, waiting for Thor to come close enough to bite.

Thor drew a cover down over them – where had it come from? Had he imagined it into being? – and traced under the dark pools of Loki’s eyes. “I will not deny you your hiding places, strip all your secrets from you. Close your eyes.”

His eyelids lowered without permission; he relaxed. “And so I am netted,” he murmured as Thor’s golden hair swung around his face. “A silver-tongued creature in a halo of gold.”

“Valuable as you are, I can imagine no fitter net to trammel your wings.” Thor trailed gentle lines of playful lightning over the planes of his chest. The bones of Loki’s sternum shook under pleasurable percussion – and Thor had not yet begun to thrust between his thighs.

“I did not know you could set a storm inside of me.”

Thor’s hungry mouth dipped to taste his shoulders, his neck; he rested his lips against his frantic pulse and chuckled silently inside to note the effect he was having on the ever-poised Loki – Loki whose clothing never dared to rumple, whose every hair was ever in place even in the midst of battle, Loki who sometimes seemed more crystal than flesh – Loki was _unraveling_ at the pressure of his lips, slender hips arching to meet the need grinding down on them.

Now Thor’s fingers were between their bodies, stroking, spreading the dampness of Loki’s need across his shaft, clever fingers diving beneath the laces of his breeches.

 _I always thought your axe-bearer’s hands were clumsy, brother_ , thought Loki. _You’ve found a very unique way to banish my prejudices!_

He felt the rose-petal cloth of the covers slide across newly bared flesh as Thor slipped his breeches down, exposing him. The aesir bent his body almost in half to take him in, to lather him, to take in his scent. Instead of the muskiness he was expecting, Loki smelled like vanilla wreathed around fireworks – something sharp and sweet and dangerous. He wanted to rub against him – shaft to shaft – to lose himself in pounding between those milk-white thighs, but he would see first to Loki – Loki who had knelt and given all to him under the shelter of his shield.

He laid his lips beneath the trickster’s ear. “You asked for the touch of my mouth before the coronation. Do you remember, brother?”

Loki made a choked sound of affirmation. “Give us a kiss,” he had teased.

“I was so hard for you that it was a struggle to walk to the dais,” Thor confessed.

The trickster was wild with laughter beneath him, imagining Thor discomfited on the very day when he would be only regal.

“So you see,” the golden warrior continued, “even when you are in my power,” he squeezed his pinned wrists for emphasis, “I am in yours.”

“Use your hands.”

It was a cry – high-pitched and desperate.

“What was that, brother?”

Loki thrashed under him. “You heard me, oaf!”

Thor pressed down on him, letting him feel everything. “I did,” he admitted, smirking. “But I would hear you again. I would have you beg for it.”

Loki’s teeth clenched and Thor knew he was bracing himself against the intensity of his pleasure. “Jotunheim will melt first,” he swore.

Thor took pity on him and used his free hand to grasp him, to pump him, to make a shelter for his frenzied thrusts, to stroke the sensitive skin of his tip and win a tribute of liquid need.

“More,” Loki moaned, his voice made traitor.

Thor gave him more, ground against him as he edged him closer and closer to an edge off of which Loki would most willingly cast himself.

“Harder, damn you!”

 _And all of Asgard thinks **me** the stronger one, _ Thor thought, marveling at the endurance of the sweat-glazed body beneath him, eyes riveted on the rocking hips. Beneath him, the rose petals were crushed, leaving mottled jam-bright marks on his shining skin.

The force of the conclusion startled both of them. It shattered the illusion around them and left them naked and panting and sticky on the sparring fields, chests heaving as they sought for breath.

Loki glanced down his long body to the mingled mess on his stomach. “Eldest son,” he teased, “ever after the lion’s share. I cannot believe you spent again.”

Thor moved his chin against the earth, lifting his head. “Your fault,” he shot back. “No living thing could look on you like that,” – _in sweetest throes of pleasure at **my** touch – _ “and do less. Now, might you spare some magic to see us made presentable before we return home?”

The look Loki returned was sardonic – but also thunderstruck. “I am only Loki, brother. My strength was used once and again in maintaining that shield.” _And in presenting you with the first time you had dreamed – though I cannot fault your imagination_. “You will have to be content with water and your own ablutions.”

It sounded like an excess of work, but eventually Thor managed to rise and walk the short distance to a cold-running stream. Cleaned, refreshed, and united, they prepared to return. Before the rainbow light took them, Thor grasped Loki’s arm. “Never again shall you feel unwanted, brother. Whatever Laufey intended, or Odin, you are the jewel of my heart now.”

Loki knew he would never cease to be the God of Mischief. He knew he could not promise to make things easy for them or to promise that he would not rebel against all that Thor offered. “I shall try to be worthy of your regard,” he returned, voice clear and solemn.

Thor made a silent promise to himself. _I will shield you, dear one – even from yourself if I must. Always._

 

 

 

 


End file.
